All good , valid and honest viewpoints. However to add to the mix, it should be remembered that the training organisation is expected to talk up the market. Your financial advisor will, Your estate agent will, the lady or gentleman in the car showroom will, the government will.
As SW says:
Nobody knows what's going to happen anywhere in the next five years. If you live by worst case scenario, you wouldn't bother getting out of bed in the morning.
That doesn't in any way negate the necessity to be cautious, prudent, and realistic, but it is something of a moot point to suggest that:
You simply cannot believe whatever CTC tell you about the future, if you are a trainee.
They will give you a projection that best suits their sales aspirations, but so will anybody else.
Profit and cashflow are the lifeblood and survival of any company. It doesn't matter whether you are an airline, a training school, or any other commercial business. Run out of cash, and the game ends! Flexicrew and similar arrangements may be less than ideal, but keep in mind that the marketplace for pilots (and particularly ab-initio pilots) over the last few years has been almost completely arid. Despite this, placements and work has been sought wherever it could be found, and this likely involved serious compromise and negotiation to keep any sort of flow going.
Look at the reality of what has happened, and what continues to happen. Airlines are retrenching deeply in certain sections of the market. Others are transforming their business models in order to adapt to survive. Others have been defeated and in turn placed thousands of very experienced pilots into this moribund market. It is true that there are regional pockets of expansion that provide some relief to this oversupply, but make no mistake things are very difficult in the wider market.
It is fortunate in some respects, that as part of many airlines cost saving plans, there has been some visible expansion in the ab-initio cadet end of the market. For some time now the infrastructure to faciliate this has been growing, with significant new investment. If you look at some of my comments here a couple of years ago, I was making this very point.
There is no denying, that training generally, and this type of training specifically, is eye wateringly expensive. Airline placements that dovetail off the back of a full time 200 hour course are a privilege, and an extremely fortunate opportunity for the relatively lucky few. They are part of a difficult apprenticeship, and any rewards need to be viewed in context. As with many other professions, such apprenticeships, placements, and internships, may involve saddling the individual with large debts, no guarantees, insecurity of tenure, and the realisation of all the risks that should have been evident at onset.
When times are good, it is to be hoped that full time contracts of employment will themselves dovetail from these placements, however the current reality is more likely to involve seasonal or part time or piecework contracts, as that reflects what many airlines currently seek as part of their own survival strategy.
Despite the very poor markets of the last few years, and accepting that near term future realities may well make it a short lived "blip," I am currently seeing good things in the cadet output from this training school. Interesting placements are coming from quality airlines in the Middle East and Far East. There has been some ressurgence of good placements in the UK. For cadets who joined CTC in the last 20 months You would likely find many who could indeed believe what they were told at onset, because timing and luck has combined with the usual aspects, to give their own experience a very different flavour.